Florida Power & Light, whose work with dark-money political committees helped to secure Republican control of the state Senate in the 2020 elections, asked state Sen. Jennifer Bradley to sponsor its top-priority bill: legislation that would hobble rooftop solar by preventing homeowners and businesses from offsetting their costs by selling excess power back to the company, an arrangement known as net metering. Their power over utilities in Florida was challenged by legislation proposed by the Democratic Senator of Florida, Jos Javier Rodrguez, in 2019. Ricardo Rossello,. "When you think about all the challenges that he had to overcome, with the hurricanes and high natural gas prices and inflation and supply chain and, you know, the media allegations and all those things, I think it took a toll on Eric that year," Ketchum said during a question-and-answer session on the call. It was based on our discussion, and it was one that I could support as a starting point, she recalled. FPL has repeatedly denied any involvement in the "ghost candidate" controversy stemming from the 2020 election cycle, but Matrix records show the company's consultants were deeply involved. The fliers warned residents not to let the Environmental Protection Agency test their soil for the presence of contaminants left by a coal plant. Moving Florida toward a brighter energy future. Indeed, the company's future looked bright. Rooftop solar in Florida expanded slowly until 2018 when the Florida Public Service Commission allowed electricity customers to lease solar systems with little or no upfront costs. I just want to reach out and see if I could get an electronic copy of the net metering bill so I can put it into drafting.. Methane is 25 times stronger at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, according to the EPA. "I think it took a toll," Ketchum said Wednesday of the multiple crises. McClure conceded the bill is not baked.. Political editor Emily L. Mahoney will send you a rundown on local, state and national politics coverage every Thursday. About a decade ago, FPL made the fateful decision to hire Matrix LLC, an Alabama-based political consulting firm notorious in its home state but with little public profile in Florida. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Light's (FPL) profits. Matrixs influence was felt on matters small and large, from Stoddards city of less than 12,000 to statewide fights over the Florida constitution. That growth has the utilities, and legislators, worried. 1 factor to reduce greenhouse gases is the transition from coal to gas. Even some environmental advocates say the change is fair and necessary because of the fast rate of rooftop solar development in that state. He said what he found was deeply disturbing. However, those policies are coming under fire as utilities become increasingly concerned about how the growth of distributed solar energy affects their bottom line. Few examples are clearer than the case of South Miami. That month, FPL announced a planned purchase ofGulf Power, expanding its reach for the first time into the Florida Panhandle, and in the process snatching away a lucrative asset from regional rival Southern Company, which had owned Gulf since 1925. You need this large power plant.. Ricardo Rossello, governor of Puerto Rico, in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, as power was being restored to a neighborhood in February 2018, five months after Hurricane Irma struck the area. FPL has already passed the $5.1 million total amount it spent in the 2020 cycle. We simply believe rooftop solar customers should pay the full cost of this investment, McGrath said. One of those Democrats,Sen. Jos Javier Rodrguez, happened to be both a prominent member of his party and an incumbent FPL particularly despised. The governors office also comes with a bully pulpit and executive order authority, both of which DeSantis has used frequently, pushing his anti-woke platform on everything from school curriculum to state pensions, unilaterally suspending elected officials, and creating his own election police agency. But DeSantis election police agency has remained silent on FPLs connection to election scandals, criminal trials, and ongoing investigations, instead focusing on the arrest of 20 individuals who may have registered to vote while ineligible, despite allegedly being told that they were eligible to vote, and the states issuance of voter IDs. For example, in documents obtained by reporters, Silagy had emailed two of his vice presidents to make a state senator's "life a living hell" after proposing a pro-solar bill. The bill is just one front in a decade-long battle against the policy. The email was forwarded on to Silagy,though there is no indication the company seriously entertained Burgess' idea. During his decade-long tenure as FPL chief, Silagy oversaw billions of dollars worth of power plant conversions from coal and oil to natural gas electric generation. As a result of the current system, my constituents are being forced to subsidize the decisions of neighbors in other counties who are in a position to be able to put these expensive systems on their homes, Bradley said. The job was to be with a shell nonprofit created by Matrix employees that supported marijuana decriminalization and, on its face, had no connection to FPL. The warm light racesacross a 600-mile expanse of land and coast before finally brightening the Perdido River in Escambia County on Florida's western border. NextEras CEO called net-zero emission targets disingenuous without plans to get to real zero, according to reports. But in the years that followed, FPL would loosen the grip of its dependence on oil-powered plants, including demolishing a 1960s-era Riviera Beach oil plant, with its memorable red-and-white smokestacks, and rebuilding it in 2014 as a natural gas plant. The proposed legislation could seriously curtail that growth. Headquartered in Montgomery, Matrix has been described there as the closest thing Alabama politics has to a non-governmental secret agency. "We're not making a connection" between the reports and Silagy's retirement, NextEra CEO John Ketchum said on the earnings call. That gave Matrix consultants and FPL executives input on Capitolist stories. The committee donated $25,000 to DeSantis political committee on the next day. Florida Power & Light customers who paid $101.70 last year for a typical monthly bill of 1,000 . Added Patino-Echeverri: The No. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy announced his retirement on Wednesday. Reported contribution totals over $100k as of September 7, 2022, from the Florida Division of Elections Campaign Finance Database. With two months until voters elect the next Florida Governor, NextEra Energy and its subsidiaries, Florida Power & Light and Florida City Gas, have poured nearly $6 million into state level campaign funds and political committees. He added that the net metering law has not been updated in 13 years and now is time to discuss it. Thats a trend nationwide, as power company profits are threatened by the rise of distributed renewable energy a technology which scientists say is essential to limiting the pollution that causes the climate crisis. DeSantis, who is attempting to build a populist profile ahead of a presidential run in 2024,has turned on FPL, having used his veto pen earlier this year to kill one of the utility's highest legislative priorities a controversial bill that would have limited the growth of the residential rooftop solar industryin Florida. Bradley said the bill language emerged after a meeting she had with Holley and other members of the utility industry. But FPL was fixated on JEA; buying it would lock Florida's entire East Coast into FPL's service territory, another bold expansion of FPL's power. One of Matrixs oldest clients is Alabama Power, which employed Perkins personal consulting firm as early as 1999. The team decided an effort to repeal the ordinance would probably fail. Download the FPL Mobile App Now The company bought an independently owned coal-powered plant in Indiantown in 2016 with the intent to close it, which occurred last summer. Indeed, Find Energy also named NextEra Energy, FPLs parent company, as one of the top renewable energy producers in the country, with another one of its subsidiaries, NextEra Energy Resources, running solar and wind projects across the country. . Commissioners said it was the highest response rate they had received on any issue and concluded that no immediate changes to net metering needed to be made. and help keep the future of New Times, Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our. Ive also.ccd Gera Peoples on this note. Three people were federally convicted for their role in the ploy. FPL's financials remain strong. Its parent company had initiated an investigation of related media reports there. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Lights (FPL) profits. Matrix employees had a Jacksonville journalist spied on after he wrote critically about FPL. Those who provoked the utilitys ire suffered a harsh response. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas emitted by human activities, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and electricity production accounts for 25% of the greenhouse gases emitted in the United States in 2019. ", FPL lauds its reliability and maintains it has the lowest electricity rates in the country. The Senate District 37 scandal was one of three races in Florida in the 2020 cycle that followed a nearly identical pattern: A close race, an unknown third party candidate to siphon some of the votes, and campaign . Matrixs principal, Perkins, says he discovered only after Pitts left the firm that he and other now-former employees had been conducting shadow activities and operations dating back to 2016. Net metering is a popular program that gives people the right to choose the energy that works for them, provides benefits to all ratepayers and creates thousands of energy jobs across Florida.. Two decades ago, the company was using more than40 million barrels of oil, the most of any electric utility, McGrath said. These email records were provided to the Times/Herald and Floodlight by the Energy & Policy Institute, a watchdog organization that works to counter misinformation about renewable energy. Im hopeful this is a conversation starter but, at the same time, its really hard to have a conversation when you have a gun to your head. The media reports were cited in an October 2022 Federal Election Commission complaint against several of the "dark money" non-profit organizations that received corporate funds. nears the finish line on new track at Freedom Field, Amazon's Daisy Jones & the Six Is the Latest in a Long Line of Embarrassing Portraits of Musical Genius. From a public perception, maybe there is value in highlighting where our emissions come from, Patino-Echeverri said. In his Seeking Rents newsletter, publisher Jason Garcia called this decision: one of the most controversial decisions made in recent years by the PSC, a five-member panel comprised of four DeSantis appointees and one remaining holdover from former Gov. The non-profit, called Broken Promises, first donated the funds to a political committee called Consumers for Energy Fairness. FPL has also said an internal investigation ordered by its board of directors cleared the company's employees of any wrongdoing; it has also refused to provide copies of that investigation. 2023 www.jacksonville.com. The CEO of the biggest power company in the US had a problem. In May 2018, FPL's sprawling. Matrix consultants had little regard for the professional press. It is a regulated monopoly which means that the. Higher electricity bills welcomed millions of Florida residents into the new year. He noted that there is never a "perfect time" to leave. She also was a corporate operative. With Gulf Power in hand, FPL would serve more than 12 million customers more than half the population of the third largest state in the country. Soon, Dunn faced attacks in the rightwing press and online, while Matrix-affiliated groups some of which received millions from a non-profit run by a contractor for Alabama Power filed a motion to intervene in the proceedings. It grew by 57 percent in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The negative is the immense amount of megawatts, but its a need for the community. And a former regional administrator for the EPA who did business with Pitts pleaded guilty to violating state ethics law multiple times. And in 2020, Matrix even harnessed the power of the press for itself, when its employees acquired control of The Capitolist, a Tallahassee-based political news site which it used for favorable coverage, leaked records show. Silagy, the FPL CEO, says the pair initially told him they had come to an amicable agreement about parting ways. A week later, state Rep. Lawrence McClure, R-Plant City, introduced an identical version in the House. "The way I look at it is it's a little earlier than I would have hoped Eric would have wanted to do it.". Today, FPL said, two-thirds of its power comes from natural gas, followed by nearly 20% nuclear, 4% solar and almost 3% coal, which comes from a plant NextEra partially owns out of state. FPL's former consultants orchestrated a financial takeover of a small Tallahassee-based political news site with a conservativebent that allowed the utility's highest executives to weigh in with editorial decisions, the internal Matrix records show. Two days later, Florida Division of Elections records show, Florida Power & Lights parent company, NextEra Energy, gave $10,000 to Bradleys political committee, Women Building the Future. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy announced his retirement on Wednesday. I find this to be horrifying and undemocratic, said Gianna Trocino Bonner, former chief legislative aide for Rodrguez, after reviewing some of the leaked documents. That decision catapulted the growth of small-scale solar capacity in the state. Bradley, who received Florida Power & Lights draft bill, is a first-term senator who is close to Senate leadership and chairs the Community Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Congressional Reapportionment. F lorida Power & Light is an investor owned company. That candidate later admitted he was bribed to run. After more than a decade leading Florida Power & Light (FPL), the state's largest power company, Eric Silagy is retiring. Florida Power & Light is pushing for it as Florida's biggest utility it has 5.5 million customers, about 65 percent of the state. The utility doesnt want to be associated with this campaign.. See How. We may need some portion of our energy to still come from fossil fuels, because there are industrial processes that are hard to electrify, she said. All of that work was a closely held secret until recently. "We're not making a connection," said John Ketchum, CEO of NextEra Energy. Electricity companies like Florida Power & Light make money off of the things they build: mainly large power plants and the power lines that bring that energy to customers. FPLs business-as-usual political contributions have continued amid intense media focus on its role in ongoing dark money election scandals and related criminal trials, with state lawmakers and a member of Congress calling for further investigation into FPLs involvement. Florida Power & Light, one of the largest utilities in the country, abruptly announced the retirement of its chief executive after a tenure marked by strong financial returns, moves toward. As such, it would seem the FPL plantsinclusion on the list is unfair. But the inclusion raises a complex but important question as 21st-century energy policy grapples with ways to further reduce carbon emissions as a climate-change doomsday clock continues to tick-tock. We're advancing solar energy in Florida and you can too with our solar programs. The company anticipates the panels will be able to generate 11,657 megawatts. Ron DeSantis, approved FPLs rate hike, raising Floridians monthly bills by over $1.5 billion in the next few years with annual increases through 2025, while increasing FPLs profits. A spokesperson for the company declined to comment on the firms activities. You always have to keep in mind what matters most is the rate (of efficiency).. In 2020,the plant generated 19.7 million megawatt hours of energy and had an emissions rate of 371.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour. Florida Power & Light has pushed back against efforts to bring solar panels to the Sunshine State, while runoff from the sugar industry is a major source of water pollution in Florida.. Can I bring it to you all later today? he wrote. Landlords would be able to. In 2020, FPL would help Florida Republicans keep control of the state Senate by contributing to several close races, in the process dispatching one of the few incumbents who was publicly critical of the company. TALLAHASSEE Recent revelations about Florida Power & Light's involvement in a dark money scheme to siphon votes away from Senate Democratic candidates prompted its parent company to conduct. Terry Dunn wanted to examine why Alabama Power charged some of the highest rates in the country. More: Solar advocates push for last-minute changes to net metering bills, Solar center: FPL blows up its last coal-fired power plant; announces plans for its newest solar center, Electric bill goes up: Your next Florida Power & Light electric bill is going way up. Media scrutiny of the company's political giving began shortly after the 2020 election, when a trio of spoiler candidates tipped close state senate races toward candidates considered friendly to Florida Power & Light. There was no question the company would be the leading bidder almost by default. There were a lot of challenges that we successfully managed," he said. Any report or suggestion that we had involvement in, financially supported or directed others to support any ghost candidates during the 2020 election cycle is patently false, and we have found absolutely no evidence of any legal wrongdoing by FPL or its employees, McGrath, the Florida Power & Light spokesperson said in response to questions for this story. Over the course of DeSantis tenure, he used that veto power once to block an anti-rooftop solar bill written by FPL. Those dark-money groups were controlled by former Matrix employees, the records show. Source: Orlando Sentinel Florida Power & Light execs worked closely with consultants behind 'ghost' candidate scheme, records reveal | Special Report By JASON GARCIA and ANNIE MARTIN ORLANDO SENTINEL | DEC 02, 2021 AT 9:46 AM Top executives at utility giant Florida Power & Light worked closely with the political consultants who orchestrated a scheme to promote spoiler candidates in three . Silagy is to be replaced by Armando Pimentel, a former senior executive at NextEra Energy. Pitts in turn has accused Perkins of defamation and of leaking confidential records to the media. Along with a private investigator, the group delved into Stoddards past for episodes to weaponize against him, such as a South Miami commissioners claim on Facebook that Stoddard had forcibly kissed her. 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